SAN FRANCISCO—U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick ordered Bay Area property developer Z&L Properties to pay a $1 million fine for bribing the former director of San Francisco Public Works, according to an Oct. 16 announcement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of California.
This sentence is part of a plea agreement that the owner of Z&L Properties, Chinese real estate tycoon Li Zhang, reached on Aug. 17 with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in exchange for his freedom from jail time.
The company admitted that its executives had approved or paid bribes to former San Francisco Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, including providing him and his daughter with food, lodging, and transportation during a trip to China in 2018.
Nuru was charged in January 2020 with a long-running honest services fraud scheme. He pleaded guilty to several charges on January 6, 2022, and was sentenced to serve 84 months in federal prison on August 25, 2022.
Another defendant, Wing Lok “Walter” Wong, the middleman who arranged Nuru’s trip to China in 2018, was charged in June 2020 and pleaded guilty. Wong will face sentence by Judge Orrick on January 18, 2024.
Mr. Zhang, a 70-year-old billionaire, appeared in the U.S. District Court on July 18, 2023 after being extradited from London to San Francisco.
He was able to leave the United States and go back to China after he entered a deferred prosecution agreement. According to a July 19 announcement, if Mr. Zhang abides by the terms of the agreement, the charge will be dismissed in three years.
Prosecutors said the purpose of the bribes was to influence Mr. Nuru to act favorably on Z&L Properties’s requests for city approvals needed to complete construction of a mixed-use property at 555 Fulton Street in San Francisco.
Z&L Properties was charged by information on July 18, with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud. Mr. Zhang was also charged in the same criminal scheme.
In addition to the $1 million fine, Judge Orrick ordered the company to implement a three-year anti-corruption corporate compliance program.
Z&L Properties was founded in 2014 in Foster City as a subsidiary company for its mother company, Chinese Guangzhou R&F Properties, to do business in California.
According to a court document of a criminal case related to Z&L Properties that was filed on Feb. 3, 2023, the office building that Z&L Properties resided in had been vacant since 2018.
“The building’s property manager had reported that the building was abandoned and had been burglarized multiple times,” the court document stated.
The representative of Z&L Properties didn’t show up for the Oct. 24, 2019 restitution hearing.
The defense attorney said in court, “The place was burglarized like a year prior. It was vacant.”
